Speaker
Description
POSTER
The dictionary of pluricentric Portuguese project, which is at its initial stage at (University of Coimbra), aims at providing a free, online dictionary that describes Portuguese as it is used in several territories around the globe. The purpose of this poster is to present theoretical questions that need to be answered to guide the methodological decisions for the creation of this dictionary, bearing in mind our alignment with the idea of “socially responsible lexicography” (Calañas Continente & Domínguez Vázquez, 2023) and the socio-political-cultural complexities inherent to the Portuguese language area. From an official status viewpoint, Portuguese is used in nine countries and one territory. Nevertheless, the functional status of the language varies significantly in these regions, ranging from its status as the mother tongue of the majority of the population (Brazil, Sao Tome and Principe, Portugal), to its role as the predominant vehicular language, typically as a second language (Angola, Mozambique), to its status as a minority language (Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste), to the point of its virtual non-use (Guinea Equatorial, Macao). As to language standards, Brazil and Portugal have been traditionally considered norm-setting centres, having fully-fledged standardizing and codifying instruments such as dictionaries and grammars, with the European variety being adopted as the norm in the other countries. However, this bicentric view has been challenged by researchers who have shown that local varieties of Portuguese have been emerging in other countries. In addition, there is a growing demand in society for the recognition of these varieties as valid and legitimate as the dominant varieties, with the compilation of a Dictionary of Mozambican Portuguese currently underway (see Machungo & Firmino, 2022). This highlights the complex relationship between language, power, and identity. These complex socio-political-cultural contexts of all these multilingual territories, together with our ideological position to counter what Rizzo (2019: 287) has identified as “homogenizing tendencies in certain language policies that seek to impose a dominant reality”, make the production of a dictionary of pluricentric Portuguese a highly challenging undertaking. One of the greatest challenges is the fact that, in territories where Portuguese was introduced as a result of colonisation, the dominant exonormative view of the language leads to a significant gap between how language is used on a daily basis and the use imposed by the school and other language regulators. This has several consequences to our lexicographic project, starting with the establishment of what definition of norm is suitable to our project, which in turn will support decisions regarding the corpus to be used as a source. Considering all that in this dictionary project means that prior theoretical research must be carried out in order to inform the decision-making process regarding corpus compilation, headword candidate list, entry configuration, entry microstructure, to name but a few. In this poster, we will position ourselves in terms of theoretical references, present crucial questions for the making of the dictionary, and share tentative answers. We hope this paper will promote exchange of knowledge and experience with peer lexicographers facing similar challenges in their projects, as well as encourage reflection on the political role of lexicography (Crowley, 1999).
